Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/394

386 surprise—“Now, what a joke! How are you?”—she put out her white hand from her draperies. He took it, and answered, “I am very well—and you—?” However meaningless the words were, the tone was curiously friendly, intimate, informal.

“As you see,” she replied laughing, interested in his attitude—“but where are you going?”

“I am going home,” he answered, in a voice that meant “have you forgotten that I too am married?”

“Oh, of course!” cried Lettie. “You are now mine host of the Ram. You must tell me about it. May I ask him to come home with us for an hour, mother?—It is New Year’s Eve, you know.”

“You have asked him already,” laughed mother.

“Will Mrs. Saxton spare you for so long?” asked Lettie of George.

“Meg? Oh, she does not order my comings and goings.”

“Does she not?” laughed Lettie. “She is very unwise. Train up a husband in the way he should go, and in after life——. I never could quote a text from end to end. I am full of beginnings, but as for a finish! Leslie, my shoe-lace is untied—shall I wait till I can put my foot on the fence?”

Leslie knelt down at her feet. She shook the hood back from her head, and her ornaments sparkled in the moonlight. Her face with its whiteness and its shadows was full of fascination, and in their dark recesses her eyes thrilled George with hidden magic. She smiled at him along her cheeks while her husband crouched before her. Then, as the three walked along towards the wood she flung her draperies into loose eloquence and there was a glimpse of